The customers are right (even when they’re wrong)

Kevin Roberts, CEO of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, said he found the shift in control to the consumer was pretty scary because it meant all the marketing skills we’d learnt were out of date and that we’d have to start learning all over again.

Here’s just one example of how things have changed. Ian Wilson, who’s the marketing chief at the Glasgow Science Centre, found it in an article in Management Today, in the autumn of 2011:

‘Poor, naïve Topman has galloped turn-ups-first into a Twitter storm that’s very quickly threatening to besmirch its reputation. The chain has come under fire after it produced two T-shirts that provided excuses for domestic violence and drew parallels between women and dogs. One featured the words “I’m so sorry, but” followed by a checklist of excuses including “you provoked me” and “I was drunk”; while the other features the line “Nice new girlfriend. What breed is she?” Topman seems baffled by the anger the two have elicited. “We would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning,” it said irritably on Facebook.

Back in the pre-Twitter era, if someone didn’t like a T-shirt, they might mutter “That’s a bit much,” before shrugging and buying themselves a pair of socks instead. These days, they can get online and whip their peers into a digital frenzy before you can say “mob mentality”.’

Spend as much time as you can listening to as many of them as you can

Product matters, brand matters more, but the customer’s relationship with you matters most. We used not to think relationships in marketing mattered too much. Everything was transactional and based on sales and market share.

Now we hear brand owners say they’re interested in recruiting a customer, not in making a sale. If the relationship is a rich one and a two-way one then sales will follow, provided your product is competitive:

• Apple – they have great relationships with their customers. Even complaints are written in a constructive ‘Please fix this, dude’ kind of way, rather than being from ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’. Theirs is a two-way, even-handed deal. Apple perform: their customers give them loads of feedback.
• John Lewis – when asked why they did so well, Charlie Mayfield, chairman and CEO, said it was down to the staff (‘the partners’). The partnership is the most responsive in retail. Staff in Waitrose are empowered to sort out things off their own bat, there and then. They listen to their customers.
• Pen-to-Paper – It’s based in Brighton. It does what it says, selling everything from wonderful cards to pens, ink, notebooks, journals. A few of us addicts of such stuff spend too much time in there. Their dream was to bring a Venetian stationer’s to Brighton but the people in Brighton couldn’t afford those prices. This is a British reinterpretation of Venice. And it’s great. Proof that listening works.

Give them unexpected treats to say ‘thank you’ for being loyal – never take them for granted

Unexpected generosity pays off. We all like presents and we all feel good when we get presents:

• Nespresso sent me some delicious marzipan biscuits as a thank you for being their customer and a member of their club.
• My local garage checked over my car before I went on a long journey – oil, water, tyres, electrics – and refused to charge me (‘Don’t be daft, Richard’).
• Occasional free glasses of wine at a local restaurant increase the bonhomie, the overall wine consumption and the propensity to return.

Never stop wooing them and romancing your brand

Seth Godin has written at length and very well on the death of interruption marketing – those noisy TV commercials that invaded your living space. Someone said being an adman nowadays was like being an intruder entering a home, starting to talk at them (possibly telling a joke) and being vaporised mid-sentence by the remote control.

People won’t take it any more. Advertising must inform or entertain or reinforce a choice already made. It’s said that the heaviest users of specific car ads are those who already own or are about to own a specific marque.

We are told bookshops are dead. Extremists even say books are dead thanks to Kindle. Waterstone’s (and book lovers) might disagree; the chain is now owned by a Russian oligarch and run by the man who runs the nearest thing to a literary delicatessen you’ll find – Daunt Books. I spoke to some Waterstone’s staff about the imminent takeover and they said:

‘HMV (the previous owners) always spoke about unit sales. They never talked about books. They didn’t like them. They were just another item of merchandise.’

At last they may regain some pride about their books and the stories in them. And as a book lover I want to interrupt the flow and say Kindles don’t have that book smell (each one slightly different) and great bookshops, such as Daunts and Barnes and Noble in New York, are alive with a sense of exploration (especially on a Sunday).

Having pride in and passion for your brand is one part of it. Loving and continuing to love your customers is another. I never tire of the Charles Tyrwhitt or Jules Verne catalogues. I love being emailed by people who want to do business. I love the staff at Ryman’s – they always seem to want to help.

Try and find out those little things in life that irritate them – and fix them

It’s the little things that hurt. Pain points are the often unspoken things that really hack you off about a brand or a sector. We have a wonderful oven, a Lacanche, but two things drive me crazy about it. When working at full tilt, all ovens on and gas rings too, the control knobs are too hot to touch and the bar in front of it on which to hang oven gloves (and Lacanche oven designers) obscures the settings so you can’t see if you are on gas mark 6 or 10.

Here’s a better example from Fast Company, and a solution:

‘Consider the humble can of house paint. For years, cans of paint have been made of tin and opened the same way: prised open with a screwdriver. But then, Dutch Boy Paint came along and introduced the Twist & Pour, an all-plastic gallon container featuring an easy twist-off lid and a neat-pour spout, which reduces the spilling and dripping typically associated with traditional paint cans. A moulded handle allows for a more controlled pour and easier carrying.

Consumers told us the Twist & Pour paint container was a packaging innovation long overdue.’

Understand how people are different and why and how to work with this

The mass market is dead. Two children, wife and job for life – that’s all gone. There are so many variations demographically and psychographically. It is not so much about segmentation now as a fast drive towards individualism. Power lies in many hands – and it’s helpful to know what they are like even at the risk of stereotyping them. Three segments are critical:

1. Grey – over-50s according to some seers. Get real – it’s the richer over-60s who feel 20 years younger, have money, have energy and are frustrated by underusing their brains. No one has ever got marketing to this group right. The cruise ships got it most right putting 40-year-olds in grey wigs so you identified with the younger ‘you’ behind the wrinkles. These guys are not one cohort. In today’s world we need to talk about 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s as separate groups – all customers seldom spoken to or understood by young marketers.
2. Young – Generations Y and Z are unlike anything we’ve seen before. They go from disenfranchised, uneducated, gang-member urban guerillas to independently minded graduates, with no hankering for a mortgage, stability or home. These are highly mobile project managers with advanced technological skills and great confidence. They have a vast network of good friends. They will rule the world. And that’s a blessing.
3. Technicolour – pink, black, brown, yellow, glass-ceiling-breaking women and geeks. This group is leading-edge, style-setting and impatient about the world they live in. They are not homogeneous, except in the sense that they are driving the arts, creativity, linguistic change and innovation. Asia meets Africa meets the gay movement meets creative women meets inventive obsessives meets this new world. We are looking at a cauldron here and it’s an exciting one for any marketer.

We don’t want to exclude any group but it’s this ‘triangle of influence’ that research companies such as Penny Hunt’s Red Thread Research are focusing on right now (www.redthreadresearch.com).

When you make a mistake say ‘sorry’ and put it right

No one’s perfect but try to say ‘sorry’ nicely.

Ask them to introduce you to their friends

The extraordinary phenomenon of social media is underpinned by its being a medium for word of mouth reaching lots of ears quickly. Never mind that corporations are now using Facebook and Twitter bogusly and potentially writing stuff like ‘Hey, that Ariel is a real cool white powder. Wicked wash!’ (Sorry, P&G, you wouldn’t ever be so silly).

A great example was the success of the independent film My Big Fat Greek Wedding which cost $5 million to make and was a sleeper hit. Despite a lukewarm critical reception it grossed over $380 million and was one of the top romantic comedies of the 21st century – thanks to word of mouth. For restaurants, word of mouth has always been the key. Now, with blogging, everyone has a say. I even found www.carlust.com the other day. As a brand owner there’s nowhere to hide. But on the upside it’s easier to get talked about now.

This is what drove the phenomenon of Swedish Fish and what constantly drives Apple’s launches.

Word of mouth is the key tool in local marketing programmes and marketing within closed user groups. So when Pretzel, the UK film company, are voted the number two UK production company behind The Edge by their peers, people talk and potential buyers have a look.

Building a fan base for a group or a brand by what Keith Webb, a founder of Freedom (a music management business), described as ‘grass roots ingenuity’ is what makes small-marketing so interesting. His specific example was a video of a group called James Honey, comprising 70 different friends and family of the group performing different dance styles within the same track. It’s charming, it’s grass roots and it’s ingenious. And I bet it got talked about by all the friends of that 70, so now a few thousand are stuck on Honey.

Always be faithful to your customers and their changing needs

Strangely, whilst quite a few alpha males call their customers punters, women who run or own companies have an irrational love of the people who buy or use their services. But they’re right. This relationship is what will define a great consumer franchise.

In my FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) infancy I was obsessed with the research company AGB, with brand-switching data and the concept of loyalists. How loyal, or better, how committed your key customers are will determine the real health of your business. When push comes to shove how many will jump ship? Whether you’re selling goods or services, in FMCG or business-to-business, the strength of positive feelings your customers have towards you is vital to your survival.

Tide (the detergent) remains the outstanding brand leader in the USA through decades of listening, innovating and being an active partner with its customers. And, except when it dozes off or worries more about the City than its customers, Marks & Spencer does the same in the UK.

Your mission as a marketer is to ask ‘how can I do more, how can I do better and how can I actually exceed their expectations and meet (or better still, anticipate) their changing needs?’

Because if you don’t, someone else surely will.

Love your customers

It’s that simple. And when you do and it shows, business is a lot more fun. I get the feeling I’m loved by a few places and I shop there or use them most.

The Ten Customer Commandments

1. Remember, they are right (even when you think they are wrong).
2. Spend as much time as you can listening to as many of them as possible.
3. Give them unexpected treats to say ‘thank you’ for being loyal – never take them for granted.
4. Never stop wooing them and romancing your brand.
5. Try and find out those little things in life that irritate them.
6. Understand how people are different and why and how to work with this.
7. When you make a mistake say ‘sorry’ and put it right.
8. Ask them to introduce you to their friends.
9. Always be faithful to them and their changing needs.
10. Love your consumer as though you were married to them.